The 52nd conference of the ANC was less a leadership election than a leadership ejection.
That's the view of many among the organisation's long-standing leadership who, over the past week, watched the brutal humiliation of Thabo Mbeki by thousands of branch members intent on removing him from the ANC presidency. His 800-plus vote defeat (among 4 000 delegates) was worse than even his most loyal supporters had expected.
Jacob Zuma and Kgalema Motlanthe - Firm grip on power
With that over and Jacob Zuma firmly in the driving seat, the ANC is emerging as a different organisation.As far as electoral upheaval goes in post-apartheid SA with its one-party dominance, the ANC's conference carries as much importance as would a change in government in a Western democracy. The difference here is that the electoral battle took place inside one party.
So what will the new ANC be like? And will it change the way we live, work and do business?
Always a broad church comprising competing social and political forces, change in the ANC is usually due to a change in the balance of power between these forces. At Polokwane, that shift was marked.
The first thing that will change under the new ANC will be a revival of its alliance with its left-wing allies, the SA Communist Party and trade union federation Cosatu. One of the first proposals to be made to the conference was that a summit of the alliance be held. Over the past five years only one alliance summit was held; attempts to convene others failed.
WHAT IT MEANS
 More formal alliance structure proposed
Mbeki camp promises fight-backs
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Outgoing secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe also questioned the informal nature of the alliance in his conference report and asked whether "it was time to consider a set of protocols around which the relationship with the alliance partners can be constructed".
In one sentence, here was victory in a battle Cosatu and the SACP had been waging for years. Proposals to set up permanent structures that would allow the allies regular access to the ruling party have been constantly ignored and thwarted all through the Mbeki era.
With this comes a new configuration: the prospects of an ANC split with the SACP are more remote now than they have been for the past five years. Rather, the party will continue in its unique mode: as ruling party and opposition rolled into one. The internal opposition, though, will have changed dramatically.
Says Liberty chairman Saki Macozoma, one of the most prominent of the Mbeki guard: "They (the new leadership) will have to accept that there is going to be contestation into the future."
The desire to illustrate that support for Zuma was not unanimous was the main reason Mbeki persisted on the path to his final humiliation, even though by the time he got to the conference he could see that the numbers were against him.
Says an ANC staffer: "The Mbeki lot will become an opposition; they stayed in the leadership race because they wanted to send Zuma that message."
Does this mean the ANC will move Left ? Motlanthe is adamant that after Polokwane, ANC and government policy will not change. Aside from relatively small policy changes agreed upon in the lead-up to the conference, Motlanthe says the big picture, especially on economic policy, will remain the same.
But ANC policy is always sufficiently broadly made to accommodate consensus. How policy is interpreted and implemented is a more relevant question.
"There may be different emphasis and the emphasis may differ according to the people doing the implementing," concedes Motlanthe.
The new top six officials of the ANC - who meet weekly and are extremely powerful - are a lot more radical in personal outlook than their predecessors.
Gwede Mantashe, the new secretary-general, is chairman of the SACP and has been a strong critic of national treasury, in particular the budget surplus. He would favour a much stronger "developmental state" and has described SA's fiscal stance as reducing the state's role to that of "a night watchman for capital".
Motlanthe's personal political views have not often been aired. But many of them are old-fashioned, centralist and commandist. He believes in a strong role for the state, which he sees as holding a solution to many of society's and the economy's problems.
A "developmental state", that is, a state that plays an active role in the economy, is already firmly part of ANC policy. Most of business agrees that the state should play a role in providing conditions for doing business and take care of certain market failures, but exactly how extensive that role should be and in which areas the state should intervene is a question that is wide open.
Change would not be dramatic or immediate, say many, and the main change at first of a Zuma-led ANC will be one of style rather than content. And, when it comes to government - a change process that will take place only after the general election in 2009 - top government bureaucrats say that a "lot will depend on who is placed where".
But style will certainly change dramatically. "He is inclusive, he is consultative - in fact, the opposite of Mbeki," says a national executive committee (NEC) member.
Zuma's advisers have indicated inclusivity will be the key to reaching consensus, and interpretations of policy long agreed - such as inflation targeting - would be put up again for wider discussion. For business, this could raise a few challenges: battles it thinks it has won could be re opened for discussion. And new battles it hoped to win - for a more flexible labour market to boost competitiveness - look even harder now.
Zuma's consultative style will have both an up and down side. On the positive side, more consultation will mean revisiting areas of activity, such as education and health, where failures have been large.
But good policies and decisions aren't always popular and improving services might require hard decisions against the very people he plans to include in consultation - public-sector trade unions, for instance.
Of course, a more Left-leaning top six will also face countervailing forces: constraints on macro economic policy to avoid scaring investors, the ability of government departments to absorb and spend greater amounts of money; and the harsh realities of being in government will make radical change difficult.
But beyond policy, the most important way in which the ANC does need to change is in what it terms its "revolutionary morality".
Careerism, fraud and the fact that people now join the ANC not to transform society but for self-aggrandisement is a problem the organisation has been plagued with for more than 10 years.
Pledges to "educate" members and breed "a new cadre" have failed to stop the rot, which is now broadly acknowledged within the ANC as being ubiquitous and endemic. Though Motlanthe is outspoken about corruption, it seems that the ANC - of which he has effectively been CEO for the past 10 years - has done little to stop it.
Mantashe is the ANC's strongest hope for renewal, say several ANC and SACP leaders. Given the ANC's choice to remain a national liberation movement with mass structures and strong internal democracy, the only thing to save it would be a programme of rebuilding ANC branches and establishing sound internal democracy.
"Mantashe's organisational skills are excellent. He is a very sober and sensitive pragmatic left-wing politician. He doesn't think that socialism is possible tomorrow, but also doesn't think that the market will save us," says an NEC member.
However, the notion being propagated by the Zuma team that a new set of leaders will result in organisational renewal is naive. Much work will need to be done and sadly history is against them: social distance and corruption have been a too frequent fate for the liberation movements that have gone before it.
Ranking the Analysts 2009
